By David Jowett

Vision7 Media’s new president is blogging for Media in Canada on the issues he sees in the industry as a new member of the Canadian landscape. In his first blog post he addresses the need to simplify today’s complex world for clients.

We are told over and over that the world is getting more complex, in our home lives and in our work lives. In advertising and media we all live this every day at an ever-increasing pace.

And yet, despite this, we continue to make our trade increasingly more complex and un-navigable for our clients. Hundreds of acronyms, indecipherable processes and reporting structures, arcane vernacular, indecision and self-serving behaviour. If anything, our leanings and tendencies are heading towards making it worse, not better. We are guilty of overcomplicating everything. To some extent this is understandable. It is a natural human response to the sheer volume and the unrelenting pace of change that is upon us today.

Big data, apps, the rapid evolution in CRM, mobile devices as well as game-changing sophistication in some of our basic transactional processes such as real-time bidding – these have all added multiple levels of complexity that never existed before. Meantime, almost everything that is emerging from within the realms of high tech and science are having some impact on the media world. Who can keep up?

Suddenly, we need to consider the side effects of any number of innovations that are changing the way we consume and interact with media. They are all having an impact, and they did not exist five years ago. Robotics operating systems. Transparent OLEDs. Touch-glass and touch-screens. Augmented reality. Digital wallets. Wearable computing. Holographic TV. Everything to do with the iPhone. Anything to do with Google and Facebook. These are but some of the new influences and options that have crept into the inventory and are now on a media agency’s ‘to-do’ list.

In this complex universe, there is but one clear role for us as client partners.

We need to make it simple. Why don’t we take a leaf out of Google or Net-a-Porter’s book and create highly personalized, high quality and nimble operations that still deliver innovation and creativity every day.

It’s our job to demystify, simplify and to collaborate among each other. We need to work together as true partners and change our habit of making the world indecipherable and complicated.

We need to make it simple and digestible. That will make us better partners with our clients.